Chapter 1

Life has a strange way of surprising you. One day things are going along perfectly and then suddenly everything you thought you knew gets flipped upside down. How we react to these changes defines us as people. Do we cave in and surrender our happiness to the unforeseen circumstances, or do we embrace change and adapt to deal with the new opportunities we face?

Sometimes those changes cause us pain and sorrow. Sometimes they hurt so badly that it becomes difficult to take a breath. Sometimes they leave us devastated and longing for the bliss of previous our lives, before the upheaval and chaos left in the wake of the changes.

Maybe it would be better if we all had crystal balls with which we could perceive our futures with total clarity. Would we want to know our fate if somehow the Universe could accurately reveal it to us? If we could understand that our marriage was doomed to serial infidelity or that our child would die in a horrible accident at the age of ten, would knowing help us? What would life be like if we knew what lay before us? What kind of life would we have if we knew precisely the outcome of every decision, every action?

I don’t think I could live like that. I prefer to go through life without certainty, to take chances and hope for the best outcome. It hurts to lose something or someone you love. However, to avoid feeling love because you know it won’t last is just sad beyond imagining. I would rather live in blessed ignorance and take each day as it comes, than base my feelings and actions on perfect prescience. I would prefer to enjoy as many years as possible in a love-filled marriage than remain single because I know that one day my husband will die.

As I sat staring out of the passenger window at the blaze of autumn colors and rocky peaks of the Colorado mountains, I wiped away a single tear. My husband Danny, always so perceptive, lightly caressed my arm. I met his gaze and tried to smile at him, but it would only come out halfway.

“Are you going to be okay?” he asked, as he raised my hand and softly kissed my fingers.

I nodded, unable to put into words what I was feeling. I squeezed Danny’s hand tightly and leaned my head on his shoulder. I let out a long, slow sigh and whispered, “Eventually.”

My father was dead.

Technically, Thomas Winslow was not my father, but he was the only one I had ever known. My birth father was an unknown sperm donor who had raped my mother on her sixteenth birthday, leaving her battered, scarred emotionally, and pregnant with me. In her heart of hearts, she couldn’t bear the thought of having an abortion. She believed all life was precious, even that of the illegitimate product of an act of violence. Thomas Winslow had been my mother’s savior, and he had loved me as his flesh and blood.

My life began with one of those sudden surprises. One day my mother Maggie was a happy-go-lucky teenager, enjoying her life in a small town in rural Texas. The next day she was in the hospital with two black eyes, three broken ribs, and one embryo growing inside her.

To make things even worse, her Bible-thumping parents blamed her for being raped. They said the devil inside her made her dress in provocative clothing and entice men into fornication. “She got what she deserved,” was, I believe, how my grandfather put it.

I lied when I said the sperm donor was unknown. He was known; in fact, he was very well known. His father was the mayor of their little town. Of course, he denied that it was rape. He said that my mother was a slut and had fucked all of his friends and he just took his turn. Everyone ignored the fact that she had been a virgin and had done nothing to provoke his attention.

As the pregnancy began to show, life became increasingly unbearable for Maggie. Her father was an abusive drunk, who decided that since his daughter was now spoiled, he might as well take advantage of her too. Her mother turned a blind eye to the abuse, blaming Maggie for that as well.

One day, Maggie had enough. She packed what little she owned into a backpack and left home. Nobody was surprised. Nobody cared. Nobody even looked for her. She was alone with no money and no hope. All she had was me.

She struggled to find a job, any job. She waited tables, washed dishes, and even cleaned people’s houses. Once I was born, it became even harder for her. Welfare and food stamps helped, but life was difficult. Maggie never knew where her next meal would come from and had no hope for any kind of future. She came very close to giving me up for adoption. It wasn’t because Maggie didn’t love me; It was because she did. She thought it was the only chance I would have to secure a decent life.

That’s when another one of life’s sudden surprises happened. Maggie was working three jobs and caring for an infant. She was in a continuous state of exhaustion and desperation and arrived late at her waitressing job one too many times. Maggie begged Gus, the manager, to give her another chance, pleaded with him to not fire her. He refused. However, he had another way she could make some money.

Maggie was a beautiful girl. Even after having me, she was drop-dead gorgeous, with long blonde hair, blue eyes, and an incredible body. Men were always flirting with her and trying to get her to go out, or more. She wasn’t at all interested. All she cared about was taking care of me.

When the manager of the restaurant told her that he had another business where she could make a lot more money than waiting on tables, she was intrigued. She knew that there were very few opportunities for a high-school dropout and single mother of a fifteen-month-old baby.

“A pretty girl like you can make a shit load of cash,” he explained, “you just gotta be accommodating to the customers.”

“What do you mean ‘accommodating’?” she naively asked.

“You got a kid,” he began, “so you ain’t no virgin. I think you know what I mean. Plus, the way I hear it, you been known to give it away. All I’m saying is why give it away when you can make money doing it.”

Maggie realized what he meant. “I ain’t no prostitute!” she fired back defensively. “I’ll go hungry before I do anything like that.”

“Ain’t nobody talking about prostitution. Hell, prostitution is illegal in Texas. You legal ain’t ya?” he asked her as he stared at her body with lustful eyes.

“What do you mean?” she asked, not sure exactly where the conversation was going.

“I mean you’re eighteen now, right?” he asked as he pushed his chair back from his beat-up desk.

“Yeah, I turned eighteen a couple of weeks ago. Why?” Maggie asked, feeling lost.

“You got no high school diploma. Ain’t nobody gonna give you no job that pays you three hundred dollars a week, after taxes. You got a baby to feed.” He softened his tone and smiled at Maggie. “Look, you’re a pretty girl. You got a body most women would kill to have. Why not do work that takes advantage of what you got to offer.”

“Three hundred dollars?” she asked, mouth hanging open in surprise, “A week?”

“Hell, with your looks,” he began, “you could probably make double that. Just depends on exactly how accommodating you’re willing to be.”

Maggie shook her head. She was growing angry. “I ain’t gonna be no hooker.”

Her former boss cut her off, “Maggie, ain’t nobody asking you to be a hooker.”

“Then what are you talking about?” she asked, the confusion clearly showing on her face.

“Look, I own a little club outside of town. It’s kind of off the books and not something I would brag about in church on Sunday.”

“What kind of club?”

“Well, it’s kind of a dancing club.”

“What kind of dancing club?”

“The kind of dancing club where pretty girls like you dance for men and show off their bodies.”

“You mean a strip joint?” she asked, her voice rising several decibels.

“Pipe down, girl.” he said, shushing her, “I don’t need all these old biddies in here knowing my business. Yes, a strip joint. My cousin Darryl runs it, but I own it. If you want, I can hook you up with a job.”

“You need waitresses?” she asked, innocently.

“Well, you could start out as a waitress and see what you think, but the real money is in dancing. You can dance can’t you?”

“I was a cheerleader in school and on the dance team,” she said, thinking back to better days.

“Then you would be perfect at it. The only difference is, you take off your clothes while you dance.”

“I ain’t gonna get naked for a room full of horny old men!”

“They ain’t all old,” he said, laughing, “but they are all horny. That’s for damn sure.”

“Why can’t I just wait tables?”

“Maggie, the waitresses are topless. So, if you’re gonna show off your tits, you might as well do it dancing and get a fuck of a lot more in tips than a waitress.”

Maggie stopped and was thinking about it hard. Her three shitty jobs paid her about five dollars an hour, which added up to only about two hundred a week before taxes. With a job that paid this well, she could quit her other two and spend more time taking care of her baby.

“Look,” he started in again, sensing her indecision, “you could do it one night and see how you like it. If you feel good, you come back and keep doing it. If you don’t, then you go get a job someplace else. No harm, no foul.”

“Can I try out as a waitress and see if I like that?”

“Baby, you don’t want to be no waitress. All the waitresses are used-up trailer park trash and old women with saggy tits. A good looking girl like you, with no education and no prospects, was made to be a stripper. You will be the hottest one in the joint and the men will give you all their money just for a chance to be near you.”

He was laying it on thick, but he meant every word of it.

“Three hundred a week?” she asked. Gus could tell he had her now.

“Minimum,” he said, “just depends on how nice you are to the customers, and how much you are willing to show off.”

Maggie had limited choices. She needed money, and she needed it now. She was behind on her rent and was probably two or three days away from being evicted.

“If I said yes, when could I start and when could I get paid?” she asked, biting her bottom lip.

“You could start tonight. Try it out. See what you think. You keep whatever tips you get plus a cut of every table or lap dance and commissions on drinks and upsells. We pay out nightly from the cash drawer at the end of your shift.”

She stood there contemplating it. She was undecided until her boss sweetened the pot.

“I’m so confident you’re gonna make a ton of money, I’ll front you a hundred bucks right now. All you gotta do is show up tonight at 8:30 and work until 1 AM. You pay me back the hundred out of your earnings and keep what’s left. If you don’t make enough, you keep everything, and we call it even.”

He pulled a roll of bills out of his pocket, peeled off a hundred dollars and extended it to her.